Neoliberalism Resurgent? Market Rule after the Great Recession

Neoliberal policies, strategies, and rationalities have been further entrenched rather than abandoned in the wake of the 2008-2009 Great Recession. Understanding this state of affairs requires careful reflection on the process of neoliberalization as a crisis-induced, crisis-inducing form of market-disciplinary regulatory restructuring. Against the monolithic conceptualizations that prevail in most popular and academic accounts, we emphasize the constitutively uneven, institutionally hybrid, and chronically unstable character of neoliberalizing forms of regulatory transformation. Attention to these dimensions of neoliberalization, we argue, is essential to our ability to understand both the limits and the tenacity of this millennial manifestation of market rule under conditions of ongoing geoeconomic crisis and persistent regulatory failure. On this basis, we consider the contemporary pattern of transnational policy making—characterized here as “fast policy”—and its implications for progressive or radical policy making alternatives.